In everyday life, people observe external stereoscopic scenes with two eyes. Three dimension (3D) display technology makes people obtain a sense of three-dimensional space based on the principle of binocular stereo vision. The principle mainly lies in that: the left and right eyes of a viewer receive different images, respectively, and then the left and right eye images can be analyzed and merged in the brain of the viewer so that the viewer can generate the three-dimensional sense.
At present, the 3D display technologies are mainly divided into two types: a naked-eye type and a glass type. As for the naked-eye type, with special arrangement on a display panel, 3D video images that are subjected to encoding treatment are individually transmitted into left and right eyes of a person, so that the user can obtain the three-dimensional sense by naked eyes without wearing any stereo glass.
Currently, a naked-eye 3D display apparatus is realized by placing a mask such as a grating barrier, a liquid crystal lens, or the like in front of a display panel; view fields are presented in front of the display panel with the grating barrier or the liquid crystal lens, so that the light emitted from different sub-pixel units of the display panel is incident into different view fields, and the two eyes of the viewer observe in the different view fields to obtain a three-dimensional sense. The principle of a liquid crystal lens is that: due to the fact that liquid crystal molecules have a birefringence property and the alignment direction thereof is changed as the electric field applied thereon varies, light can be focused or diffused, and thus an effective optical zoom is obtained within a small space.
Generally, positive liquid crystal molecules are employed in a liquid crystal lens. In case of switching from a 2D display mode into a 3D display mode, as illustrated in FIG. 1a, under the effect of an electric field, a long axis of a liquid crystal molecule is aligned along the direction of the electric field lines. Basing on this property, positive liquid crystal molecules can be driven by different electric fields to form a lens with a gradient reflectivity, i.e., a lenticular lens structure, which can be used to realize a naked-eye 3D display. In case of switching from the 3D display mode to the 2D display mode, the electric field applied on the liquid crystal molecules is typically removed to relax the liquid crystal molecules back to the initial state due to their own elasticity. Due to the capacitance between the liquid crystal molecules and the restriction on the rotational viscosity of the liquid crystal molecules, a response time of the relaxing process become too long, typically more than 1 second. The overly slow response significantly influences the display effect and the sensory experience during switching from the 3D display mode into the 2D display mode, and also is not helpful to realize the naked-eye 3D display in full resolution.